


Research Ethics

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 00:11:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2129730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Penny doesn't understand about Leonard until she's met his mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Research Ethics

**Author's Note:**

> Content note: none of the standard archive warnings apply; however, this story includes peripheral discussion of the emotional abuse of a child. My contact info is on my AO3 profile if you'd like to ask for more detail before reading.

1\. He doesn't like loud noises. There's this time, not long after Penny first reads his mother's books for class, when they hold this surprise birthday party for Amy. It's in Sheldon and Leonard's apartment because it has more open space and will be easier to fill with people, and they spend the afternoon hanging decorations and blowing up balloons, and it's kind of fun. And then Bernadette remembers this time she saw Amy staring lovingly at the full-colour images on some party planning Pinterest and they hang Christmas lights, too, even though Sheldon's complaining about how it's August and seasonally non-optimal. Bernadette lights candles and puts them on every surface, and maybe it is unseasonal but it looks wonderful. But of course the lighter Bernadette is using warms the air a little and some of the low hanging balloons start to shift on their strings, and in a moment of silence one of them expands and goes pop.

Leonard doesn't make a sound. It's only because he's standing right next to her chair that she feels the tension come into him, and hears the higher pitch of his breathing. When, a few minutes later, she casually leans her head against him, she can make out the speed of his heart beating, vivid and frightening under his skin.

*

2\. His research isn't theoretical. At first she doesn't understand that at all, or, at least, she does, but just that Sheldon probably isn't telling the whole truth when he says it's because Leonard is burdened by the unoriginality of his thinking and his profoundly unbeautiful mind. But she's sure that's not it, or not all of it: Leonard is pretty smart, not just by people standards but by smart-people standards. And she's never told him, but she's seen him teaching a couple of times and to her that's beautiful: the same sort of beautiful as blotting your lips after a perfect line of lipstick or a line delivered just right to make the audience cry. It's people doing what they love, and that, at least, makes sense to her.

But at the bottom of her psych class reading list there are some papers she downloads off the college library servers, and some of them are written by Leonard's mom, and some of them link to follow-up papers, and some of those papers have words like "research ethics" and "agreed participation" in bold font with underlining. One has a picture of a child with a black bar over his eyes. Penny understands why Leonard checks other people's work.

*

3\. Sometimes, he doesn't take up a lot of space. His mother visits early in the fall and after she's gone Penny finds Leonard curled up between the cushions with his knees drawn up and his hands clasped. And it's not like he takes up all that much space anyway – he's about the only grown adult she knows whose feet don't reach the ground from an office chair – but right now he's pressed into the back of the couch like he's being taxed on how much of it he uses. Penny turns up the lights a little way and goes to sit next to him, and when he doesn't tell her to go away, reaches over and strokes his hair a little. He doesn't speak much that day, or the next, but Sheldon has conveniently discovered some sort of sociological research that he absolutely must do immediately that will involve having every film Leonard's ever loved on TV at a low volume, and the three of them get along okay.

*

4\. Although his family are in New Jersey, he sends a Mother's Day card to Texas. It makes more sense at Christmas, when a package comes carrying a Galveston postmark and a pair of hand-knitted fingerless gloves. Sheldon gets a pair too, but Leonard's are red.

*

5\. He's kind. Of course, he's kind - he looks after her when she's sick and he's considerate of Sheldon and he spends a lot of his time making sure his students don't fail for want of a little help. But it's when Raj comes running out of the bathroom shrieking and then Amy goes in and comes out yelling things about _too many eyes_ and _too many legs_ , and Leonard goes in with a glass and this week's _Nature_ and carries the spider all the way down the stairs so he can let it go into the bushes, that she understands it. Leonard leans against the doorway and tells the spider to enjoy its new-found freedom, and Penny understands that he is kind to everyone but most of all, to those who are vulnerable: those who are scared or small or different, at the mercy of those more powerful than themselves. 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "role reversal" square on my trope_bingo card.


End file.
